I admit it. I’m a procrastinator. It was just a couple of weeks ago that I got around to finishing up my 2008 tax returns, which should have been filed in April. Fortunately, the IRS and California allow extensions until Oct. 15 — as long you file a request and pay taxes owed by April 15.

Because I am partially self-employed and I own a rental house, it’s in my interest to make sure I uncover every legitimate expense so I can deduct them on my return. To make sure that I have a record of business expenses, I typically put them on a credit card, use an online bill payment service or, in rare cases, write a paper check.

In theory, this means that all my information should be available whenever I need it from the Web sites of my banks and credit card companies. But there’s a problem. Most banks and credit card companies store information for a limited period of time — sometimes as few as three months and rarely more than a year. When it’s October 2009, that makes it tough to unearth records going back to January 2008.

I don’t quite understand the reason for this limit. It’s not as if disk space for their servers is all that expensive or limited. Google can store Gmail virtually forever, and photo and video sharing services like YouTube and Flickr seem to have almost unlimited space for user data.

Aside from persuading banks to store records forever or at least for a couple of years, another obvious solution is

to remember to go to your online financial accounts every month or so to download the data and store it on your hard drive. I do that when I remember. However, to be honest, when I’m not in tax mode I typically don’t think much about financial records, so I didn’t do it regularly enough in 2008 to have a complete record.What I wound up doing was relying on monthly statements, paper records or PDF files that list all expenditures during the year. That gave me all the information I need, but because it wasn’t “machine readable,” I had to manually enter it into my spreadsheet to come up with the necessary data for the IRS.

Another solution is to rely on personal finance software. Quicken can be configured to download credit card and bank information, but if you’re using the retail product, you have to remember to run the software regularly so that it can go online to update its records.

A better solution is to use an online financial management program that runs and updates in the background even if you do nothing. The two leading services are Mint.com and Quicken Online. However, assuming it’s approved by regulators, Intuit, which owns Quicken, will soon own Mint as well. Quicken Online will be positioned as a mobile and online interface for Quicken desktop users. Mint will remain a Web-based service.

With both Quicken Online and Mint you can add account information for credit cards, checking, investments and other accounts, and the services will automatically upload information daily regardless of whether you sign in.

Between the two, Mint is by far the better service, which is probably one of the reasons Intuit acquired it. It’s more automated and more comprehensive. It even keeps track of the estimated value of any houses you own through Cyberhomes.com.

Once you tell Mint about an online account, it downloads as much information as the financial institution provides. If the bank or credit card company keeps data online for a year, you’ll get the year’s worth, but if it only keeps it for three months, that’s all you’ll get. But, once the account is set up it will keep the transactions up to date. While you don’t have to log in regularly, you do need to log in at least every 180 days to keep your Mint account open.

You have to tell Mint the user name and password for each account, but sometimes that’s not enough. Many financial instructions now ask you additional questions such as the make and model of your first car, the name of a childhood pet or the street you grew up on. If that information is necessary to log in, Mint will tell you there’s a problem and ask you to specify it. It’s possible that the bank has even more questions up its sleeve that could come up later so it’s a good idea to log into Mint periodically to make sure it has all of the challenge questions the bank might ask.

Mint can report your expenses and income by category on an account-by-account basis or in a single registry that combines all your accounts. You can sort by date, transaction description, category or amount. Most important, you can export the data to a CSV file that can be opened by Excel and other spreadsheets. Unfortunately, it doesn’t export into a format that can be imported by Quicken, but I hope they’ll fix that after the merger goes through.

Mint can also help you track your investments, establish budgets and keep track of how you’re doing on your budget by category such as restaurants, shopping, clothing, alcohol and bars, and gas. It does a pretty good job of automatically categorizing credit card expenses, but you can override them if necessary.

And, of course, Mint is mobile. You can get real-time updates via text message or use the iPhone app.

Microsoft is, if anything, tenacious.

After nearly three years trying to get people to buy Vista, the company decided to put that operating system in its rearview mirror.

On Thursday, Microsoft will introduce Windows 7 to the general public.

I’ve been using various test versions of Windows 7 for nearly a year, and the final version since August. As I said in my review of the final version, Windows 7 is a worthy upgrade.

While the improvements over Vista and even Windows XP aren’t dramatic, they are significant.

Having said that, I don’t think everyone should upgrade existing machines, but those who are willing to spend the time and money for an upgrade will notice improvements.

Before you spend anywhere between $120 to $220 for a Windows 7 upgrade, think about instead buying it with a new PC. With prices at near-record lows, you may be better off replacing your PC (with Windows 7 installed) rather than upgrading.

For example, Dell’s $399 Inspiron 546 comes with Windows 7 Home Premium, along with a pretty fast processor, 3 gigabytes of memory and a 320 GB hard drive. Many Windows 7-equipped laptops will also be on the market for a low price. If you bought your machine recently, check with your PC maker or microsoft.com to see if you qualify for a free upgrade.

If you do buy an upgrade, I recommend the $120 Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium version for most users. It has the

features most consumers and professionals will care about, including an easy-to-use home networking setup, an improved user interface and the ability to watch, pause, rewind and record TV programs on tuner-equipped PCs.My favorite feature is the new task bar that shows you thumbnails of windows of all running programs, making it easier to manage running several programs at a time. The $200 Professional edition adds company networking connectivit and the ability to back up to a home or business network. There is also a $220 Ultimate edition, but most home users and small businesses will do fine with Home Premium.

There is also the issue of whether to install the 32-bit or 64-bit version. In brief, the 64-bit version — in theory — is faster and allows you to address more memory, which can be great for people who play heavy duty games, edit video or run many programs at a time.

However, 64-bit software won’t work on older hardware, and there maybe some software and drivers that won’t work on a 64-bit system.

While we all will eventually use 64-bit software, the safest bet s to stick with a 32-bit Windows 7 OS for now.

The upgrade software will allow you to upgrade a Windows XP or a Windows Vista machine to Windows 7, but it won’t work with older operating systems such as Windows 98. If you upgrade from XP, you will have to do a “clean install,” which copies your old Windows installation to a backup directory on your hard drive and gives you an entirely new installation of Windows 7. Once that’s done you’ll have to reinstall your software.

If you’re upgrading from Vista Service Pack 2, you have the option to doing what Microsoft calls an “upgrade,” which keeps you existing software.

Personally, I think a clean install is a better choice because it gives you a brand-new installation with none of the problems that typically plague Windows machines after a few months of use.

Remember to always back up your data before installing any new operating system.

Get all of your installation CDs or DVDs handy, as you will need to reinstall your software. For free programs, like the Firefox browser, you can just download the latest version after you install Windows 7. Microsoft has a Web page (http://tinyurl.com/technetwindows7files) with instructions on how to migrate files and settings.

Allow plenty of time for the installation process — about one to two hours. Fortunately, once you start the process you can walk away. Laptop users should keep their laptop plugged into the wall during the install.

I’ve been a big fan of “cloud computing,” but the public’s acceptance of storing vital data on remote servers may take a hit because of media reports about T-Mobile Sidekick users losing personal data.

I remain bullish because I can’t think of any other situation where people have lost data stored by a reputable and well-funded company like Microsoft, Google or Yahoo. All these services have experienced outages but, as far as I know, no data loss.

Obviously, it can happen. But the odds of a company with redundant data centers losing data strikes me as a lot lower than the odds of you or me losing our phone or laptop or having a computer’s hard drive or a phone’s memory fail.

Early this month, some Sidekick users discovered that their address books, photographs and other personal data on their device were no longer accessible. That’s because the data is stored on servers operated by Microsoft and not on the device itself.

That’s what is meant by “cloud computing.” Data is in the “cloud” (actually, in servers connected via the Internet) rather than on the device.

Last year, Microsoft bought Palo Alto-based Danger, which makes the Sidekick smart-phone, which is sold exclusively through T-Mobile.

It’s my understanding that the Sidekick offers some local caching or temporary data storage, but permanent storage is handled by the network. For the most part, that works well because the device connects to the network frequently, accessing the latest data.

Because of a technical glitch, Microsoft’s servers lost customer data. Early reports indicated that customers were unlikely to ever get their data back. But in a statement posted on its Web site on Monday, T-Mobile said recovering some lost content “may now be possible.” The company is offering all customers a free month of data service and promises a $100 “customer appreciation card” for “certain customers (who) have experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content.”

As it turns out, the Sidekick is not one of the more popular smart-phones, so the number of people affected by this outage is relatively small. But the problem does raise questions about other cloud computing services operated by Google, Microsoft and other companies.

Google, for example, has long promoted Web services where data is stored by Google and accessible to users via the Internet. All messages and contact information used by millions of Gmail users, for example, are stored “in the cloud.” The same is true with Yahoo Mail and Microsoft’s Hotmail. And it’s not just addresses and e-mail. Google and Yahoo both store calendars, and the Google Docs service allows you to go online to create and edit word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations stored on Google servers rather than your own device.

In an e-mail, a Google spokesperson said, “We actually go further than backup.” In the case of Gmail, “we provide live replication of data “… and keep multiple copies of data in separate locations for near-instant disaster recovery.”

Google also said that for its Android phones, such as the T-Mobile G1 or myTouch, “Gmail, calendar and contacts data is stored locally on the device and is mirrored in the cloud. So whether you lose your phone or the cloud goes down, your data will remain accessible.”

Although the BlackBerry and iPhone have plenty of local storage for address books and other data, they, too, could be affected by data stored in the cloud if you wind up synching bad data over good data.

For example, I synchronize my BlackBerry with my Google account to make sure I have the most recent addresses and calendar items. A few months ago, I had accidentally erased some of the contacts in my Google address book (it was my fault, not Google’s) and when my BlackBerry did an automatic sync, the data was overwritten there as well. Fortunately, I had a third copy of the data stored in my Microsoft Outlook file on my PC, so I was able to restore the data to Google and then to the BlackBerry.

The Palm Pre relies primarily on address data from Gmail or Microsoft Exchange. But it does keep a copy of that data in its memory so, as long as you don’t sync bad data over good, you should be OK in the event of a data center outage. Palm also backs up addresses you enter on the device to its own remote storage system.

And, while I realize this seems almost 19th-century, there is no harm in having an old-fashioned hard copy of critical data printed out on paper. It’s not very convenient to re-enter it back to a computer, but it’s better to have it on paper than not at all.

While I fully understand the gravity of putting something on public record that you may later regret, I also worry about how fretting over the future implications of everything you say and do can affect you in the here and now. I’m concerned it can take away some of the fun in life and cause people to try too hard to be politically correct.

Back when I was a kid, and even as a young man, I did and said some stupid things that seemed OK at the time but that would not necessarily be OK by today’s standards.

Remember streaking? In the ’70s, it was not uncommon for college students of both genders to run through campus wearing nothing but their sneakers. I never streaked but it was a relatively common occurrence at the university where I worked during the mid-’70s. Nude beaches were also quite popular for awhile, even among people who are generally pretty careful about making sure their private parts aren’t exposed in public.

Of course, some streakers and sun worshippers were caught on film and video tape, but that was before Web-connected digital cameras and camcorders were built into practically every cell phone, not to mention omni-present security cameras. Today, just about anything that happens to anyone can be recorded, uploaded and stored forever.

And it’s not just actions that can be recorded and stored, but also words. In today’s environment, most people I know would never dream of saying anything that could be perceived as racist, sexist or disrespectful. And that’s a good thing. But what is considered acceptable changes over time.

I’d like to think I’ve always been respectful of minorities, people with disabilities, women, gays and other groups which, sadly, sometimes find themselves at the receiving end of inappropriate comments. But while growing up in America as a straight, white male in the ’60s, I’m quite sure I said things I would never say today. It was nothing blatant, but acceptable standards of speech change over time. I remember joking around with a female co-worker in ways that today could be interpreted as sexual harassment. The jokes were innocent and reciprocal, yet I’m glad they weren’t memorialized for people to interpret by today’s standards.

As much as I worry about the risk of being “caught on tape” saying something inappropriate, I also worry about living in a society where we’re afraid to say or do anything edgy or out of the ordinary without having to fear the long-term consequences.

Do we really want to stamp out all experimentation with humor or anything else that may not be socially, morally or politically correct by arbiters of today’s standards and those of the future? Values change over time. What seems OK now could haunt us years later.

I think back to the case of Douglas Ginsburg, who was nominated by President Reagan to serve on the Supreme Court in 1987 but felt compelled to withdraw from consideration after it was disclosed that he had smoked marijuana when he was younger. Ginsburg is a baby boomer and when he allegedly used marijuana during the sixties and seventies, it was far from socially unacceptable, especially among college students. Yet, taken out of context in the midst of Supreme Court hearings, it suddenly became a deal stopper.

I’m not suggesting people should feel entitled to take illegal drugs, run around naked or make disrespectful comments. But I do think we need to find a way to come to peace with all the recording technology around us without feeling that we have to live repressed lives.

This is adapted from a column that first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News